Review of Buckingham Nicks

[bombaysaffires]

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/m...ew-1235429410/


THE ORIGIN STORY OF STEVIE AND LINDSEY
A long-awaited reissue of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham's 1973 debut, Buckingham Nicks, takes us back to the beginning of rock & roll’s ultimate dysfunctional romance

By ROB SHEFFIELD
SEPTEMBER 17, 2025

When Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham released Buckingham Nicks in 1973, they were just a couple of nobodies. Two hippie kids lost in L.A., doing an unfashionable folk-rock flower-child record. Nobody bought it. Nobody cared. Some might have heard it as a promising debut, others as a flop. But it’s safe to say that nobody heard it and said, “Not only are these two of the planet’s greatest songwriters, this is an album they’ll keep arguing about for the next 50 years!”

But in that way, as in every other way, the world underestimated how much drama these two had in them. Buckingham Nicks has taken its rightful place in history as their origin story for the ultimate rock & roll dysfunctional romance. The couple recorded it before joining Fleetwood Mac — before the fame, before the shawls, before the drugs, before anyone knew how much exquisite torture they’d keep dragging into all our lives forever. It’s just the Ballad of Stevie and Lindsey, back in the early days, when they didn’t even need three other lunatics in the band to make a cosmic emotional mess.

After the couple joined Fleetwood Mac for classics like Rumours, Buckingham Nicks became a footnote in their story. It’s been a rare collector’s item for decades, a lost gem never released on CD. Most of their fans never even heard it. But it’s finally back in this long-awaited reissue. No hits, no bonus tracks — just a charming little American beauty of a record. You can hear these two lovebirds learn their craft, alone in the tall grass, doing their stuff, with nobody to impress except each other.

For years, it seemed crazy to hope this Buckingham Nicks reissue would ever happen. They’ve spent years promising it, un-promising it, denying it, battling over it in public. But the exes’ long-running love/hate story finally exploded in 2019, when the band kicked out Lindsey. (What other band could manage to break up onstage in the middle of accepting a MusiCares award as humanitarians of the year? Only these guys.) It looked final, especially after the tragic death of Christine McVie.

But it was a shock this summer to see matching social-media messages from Stevie and Lindsey, teasing this project. They posted lyrics from “Frozen Love” — the first move they’d made together in years. On one hand, we’re all grown-ups here, and we know rock vets don’t necessarily do their own social media, right? But on the other hand, we also know that nobody speaks for Stevie unless Stevie says so. Hell, she’d show up in public wearing sweatpants before she’d ever let any of her team go rogue about Lindsey, a.k.a. Mr. Rulers Make Bad Lovers. So it looks like these two have sucked us all right back into their music, their madness, their whole glorious saga — just as they always do.

That musical chemistry is loud and clear on Buckingham Nicks. “We write about each other, we have continually written about each other, and we’ll probably keep writing about each other until we’re dead,” Nicks told me in 2014. “That’s what we have always been to each other. Together, we have been through great success, great misunderstandings, a great musical connection.” Listening now, you can tell they already knew what they’re doing. Lindsey is one California guitar boy who learned his tricks from Brian Wilson — he’s into verse-chorus-verse tunecraft, not sloppy jams. Stevie flexes her cowgirl side — they dedicated the album to her wild-ass grandfather A.J. Nicks, who played her country records when she was a little girl.

They wrote the songs in L.A., after moving together from San Francisco — she worked nights as a waitress, while he sat on the couch, smoked hash, and played guitar. They met in 1965, at a teenage party where he sat in the corner strumming the Mamas and the Papas’ classic “California Dreamin’.” She walked over and sang along. “I just threw in my Michelle Phillips harmony,” she recalled. “He was so beautiful.” Considering all the sexual/chemical disasters in the Mamas and the Papas, this song might seem like an ominous way to meet — except Lindsey and Stevie went on to make Michelle and John Phillips look like total amateurs in the California-nightmare department.

“Crystal” is the closest thing to a famous tune on Buckingham Nicks — they redid it on Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled 1975 album, slightly overshadowed by Nicks’ other two contributions. (Those would be “Rhiannon” and “Landslide.”) There’s the finger-picking instrumental valentine “Stephanie,” the jazz standard “Django,” and the seven-minute showstopper “Frozen Love,” one of the only official collaborations these tortured poets ever wrote together. Their friend Waddy Wachtel played guitar, alongside session pros like Jim Keltner and Jerry Scheff. Waddy’s big brother Jimmy did the artists a favor and took the cover photo, presenting them as a wide-eyed hippie couple in the Garden of Eden, before shirts were invented. (He later did classic covers like Bruce Springsteen’s The River.)

The result was a total commercial flop that nobody noticed — except for Mick Fleetwood, who recognized greatness when he heard it. In 1973, Fleetwood Mac was just another washed-up band of English blues hounds, scrounging for gigs, years past their Sixties heyday with their original guitar genius Peter Green. When Mick heard the album, from producer Keith Olsen, he figured maybe he could hire this Lindsey Buckingham guy to give the band a little taste of California sunshine.

But Lindsey had to make things difficult — which turned out to be his specialty. He refused to join unless they also brought in his girlfriend, even though the band already had another female singer-songwriter. No matter how much trash people talk about Lindsey, you have to applaud this heroic gesture of loyalty — he was willing to throw away his entire career rather than sell out Stevie. Mick could have laughed in his face — who did this punk kid think he was, playing hardball with the rock stars? But he decided to give in and hire them both. It’s one of the only rational decisions Mick Fleetwood ever made.

As everybody knows, the pair took the Mac to megastar level with classic songs about breaking up, making up, packing up, shacking up, and wreaking endless misery upon each other, along with the rest of us. Rumours just gets more famous all the time, as chronicled in Alan Light’s excellent new book Don’t Stop. Meanwhile, Buckingham Nicks got forgotten by history. In their iconic 2012 he-said-she-said interview with Rolling Stone’s Andy Greene, they totally contradicted each other about reissuing it. “Next year is the 40th anniversary of Buckingham Nicks,” Stevie said. “And we’re hoping next year to get the record out.” She suggested doing a live Buckingham Nicks tour, calling it “a sparkly, special, extra present.”

But for these two, sparkles only happen when the house is burning down, and they couldn’t get their heads together in time to make it happen for the 40th or even 50th anniversary. As Lindsey lamented, it “makes us the anti-Eagles, in terms of never, ever being on the same page.” Yet there’s something so beautifully poetic about finally reviving it for its 52nd birthday — a round number would be the pragmatic adult business move, and what fun would that be? Having these songs out there in the world again is a historic occasion to celebrate. If you listen to Buckingham Nicks in 2025, you can hear all their combustible chemistry, even in their young and innocent days. And you can hear why these two have spent the past five decades making the lives of music fans — not to mention their own — so much messier. No doubt we would all lead more peaceful, civilized, emotionally stable lives if this album never existed. But that’s all the more reason to be thankful that it does.

[Villavic]

An unfashionable folk-rock flower-child record? Well I was 7yo in 1973. Maybe older ledgies could confirm or disagree about that; I ask cause when I (google) translate it, unfashionable means the same as old-fashioned.

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by Villavic

An unfashionable folk-rock flower-child record? Well I was 7yo in 1973. Maybe older ledgies could confirm or disagree about that; I ask cause when I (google) translate it, unfashionable means the same as old-fashioned.

Not in style. Unhip.

[FuzzyPlum]

Originally Posted by Villavic

An unfashionable folk-rock flower-child record? Well I was 7yo in 1973. Maybe older ledgies could confirm or disagree about that; I ask cause when I (google) translate it, unfashionable means the same as old-fashioned.

Similar, but not necessarily the same. Unfashionable just means not in fashion. Not quite the same as old fashioned. But minor semantics.

[sue]

Originally Posted by Villavic

An unfashionable folk-rock flower-child record? Well I was 7yo in 1973. Maybe older ledgies could confirm or disagree about that; I ask cause when I (google) translate it, unfashionable means the same as old-fashioned.

Maybe the height of hippy rock flower childness had peaked and by 1973 was ebbing.
So the genre was old fashioned.

[BLY]

Ok so I have had and been listening to the Buckingham Nicks album since 1977. I have the vinyl and several cd boots. I’m listening to the official cd on my Bose and I’m blown away!

[Villavic]

This review is interesting. After a brief intro of the well known story of L&S, it describes each song.

https://baylorlariat.com/2025/09/23/...f-lost-albums/

Review: ‘Buckingham Nicks’ re-emerges from land of lost albums
By Mackenzie Grizzard September 23, 2025

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s first and only collaborative album, “Buckingham Nicks,” unceremoniously flopped upon release 52 years ago. They weren’t the timeless, tortured lovers that “would never get away from the sound” of their love as we know them today — they were simply two struggling singer-songwriters trying to make ends meet in 1970s Los Angeles.

Just four years later, Lindsey and Stevie were catapulted into the limelight with Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album, “Rumours,” which would go on to win the coveted album of the year at the 1978 GRAMMYs. The unique, soulful, blues-ridden rock ‘n’ roll sound, combined with the raw emotions of multiple failing relationships, would cement “Rumours” into one of the most iconic albums of all time.

And so, the forgotten “Buckingham Nicks” album would fade into the past, forever dancing around the spotlight cast by Fleetwood Mac’s success — until last Friday, when “Buckingham Nicks” was finally released in its entirety, 52 years in the making.

In this 10-track release, many of the songs are hauntingly reminiscent of the early days of Fleetwood Mac, wonderfully charged with the distinct melodies of Stevie and Lindsey.

The album opens up with “Crying in the Night,” which was actually released as a single in late July. This perfect first track captures Nicks’ mystique essence; it’s hard to miss some of the lyrical and vocal similarities to her 1986 solo album, “Rock a Little.” Beginning an album that disappeared half a century ago with a song about being haunted by a woman who left you is iconic and on brand.

“Stephanie” is one of the two instrumental tracks on this album, which is an interesting shift from two seasoned lyricists like Buckingham and Nicks. However, it is an absolute treat to hear a pure, undisguised Lindsey Buckingham guitar sequence — and he does not disappoint. Stephanie is actually Nicks’ given birth name, so it’s a pretty safe bet to assume this beautiful, folksy ballad was written for her. It’s gently sweet, and the way Buckingham’s guitar sequentially trails off seems to mirror their own on-and-off relationship.

“Without a Leg to Stand On” is another Buckingham certified classic. Emotionally resonant guitar melodies seem to be his brand — and this particular track is evocative of many songs on The Mac’s “Tango in the Night.” It’s deeply adjacent to “Go Your Own Way,” with Stevie singing background vocals behind Buckingham’s clear and rhythmic guitar tones.

“Crystal” might sound familiar to many, mostly because it was reworked into the 6th track on Fleetwood Mac’s debut album in 1975. “Crystal” was actually written by Nicks with her father and grandfather in mind and explores the empowerment of love throughout her life’s journey. Despite this, Fleetwood Mac’s producer at the time insisted it be sung by Buckingham instead, and that’s how both versions of “Crystal” were permanently immortalized. Although she later recorded a solo version for the “Practical Magic“ soundtrack, this new release was a missed opportunity for Stevie to reclaim this deeply personal song.

“Long-Distance Winner” hints at the perpetual motif present in all aspiring singer-songwriters: the obsession with winning and losing. Buckingham’s intricate guitar work, coupled with Nicks’ deep vocals, paints the tension-filled story of their love, which we know all too well. It’s a bit more country-flavored than his work with Fleetwood Mac, and the guitar breaks throughout the song leave you with an almost brittle feeling of loss and longing.

“Don’t Let Me Down Again” is another “Buckingham Nicks” original that was later adapted by Fleetwood Mac, and it rocks just as well. It’s plucky, hearty and just a little bit twangy — and is especially evocative of the guitar work in Fleetwood Mac’s “Second Hand News.”

“Django” is a cover of the iconic John Lewis and is the second of the two instrumental tracks on the album. This tribute to ’50s jazz is done in a more acoustic folk way and is nostalgic in nature, reflecting Buckingham’s drawn inspirations from artists like Scotty Moore, Cat Stevens and James Taylor.

“Races Are Run” is a song for the muse of competition, revealing the doubt that lurks behind their ambition. For Nicks and Buckingham, this song is the embodiment of what they’ve sacrificed for success — and if that makes them winners or losers. Nicks’ vocals seem to take a muted, reserved approach that contrasts her usual style, marking this track as a reverent reflection of their career.

“Lola (My Love)” is like a crystal ball looking into the future, because Buckingham’s guitar work on this song reflects exactly what he brought to Fleetwood Mac. This part, specifically, “When I come home, one thing on my mind, she knows just what I’m looking for,” is actually eerily similar to guitar notes that reappear in Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.” If you were to strip both songs down to pure guitar, Buckingham’s genius would be hard to miss.

“Frozen Love” is the only song on the album co-written by both Nicks and Buckingham, and wraps up the album wonderfully. Nicks’ vocals on this seven-minute song are precisely what she’s known for: enriching, bewitching and soul-reaching. Buckingham’s guitar riff might be one of his best, second only to classics like “The Chain” and “I’m So Afraid.” This is the only song on the album where each of their individual styles shines through without a desperate fight for placement.

This album is one for the old souls, for those who grieve Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, cherish the acoustic sound of Don Henley, and were lulled to sleep as a child by Gerry Beckley. “Buckingham Nicks” is a beautiful reminder of what we both gained and lost when the pair joined Fleetwood Mac, and how some great sounds will never truly die.